The series begins with the crash of an Earth spaceship that encountered a time warp while approaching Alpha Centauri on August 19, 1980.

The other two astronauts, Colonel Alan Virdon and Major Peter J. Burke, are unconscious but are rescued by an old man who carries them to an old bomb shelter.

Ape councilor Zaius (an analog of the character from the original movie), notes that another such incident occurred ten years earlier.

Zaius doesn't trust Urko to follow his orders and bring back any surviving humans, so he sends along his newly hired chimpanzee assistant, Galen.

He reads parts of the book and begins to doubt the history that he has been told: apes have always been dominant, and humans have always been inferior and subservient.

This temple turns out to be an ancient ruin where a poisonous invisible gas is located (likely phosgene or diphosgene circa WWI Germany).

Virdon, Burke and Galen are near the sea foraging when they encounter a human, named Leuric, who is experimenting with flight in a hang-glider he has built himself.

But when Leuric is captured by gorilla soldiers, a chimpanzee scientist, named Carisa, tries to persuade Zaius and Urko to replicate the glider for her own deadly purpose.

In 2015, La-La Land Records issued a remastered and expanded limited edition album, featuring all six original scores plus the Newman material.

[10] Details regarding "The Trek," "Freedom Road," "The Mine," and "The Trial" were provided in issue 12 of Simian Scrolls (a Planet of the Apes-based magazine), reprinted from the television series writer's bible.

The show was canceled after half a season because of poor ratings due at least partly to direct competition by NBC's Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man.

During 2019, MeTV began broadcasting the series as part of its late Saturday Night "Red Eye Sci-Fi" block.

When the Planet of the Apes telefilms began syndication, ABC's owned and operated stations, who bought them for their afternoon movie programs (with titles such as The 4:30 Movie), asked Roddy McDowall to re-create his role of Galen in a series of new beginnings and endings specifically for these stations, billed as "The New Planet of the Apes".

The introductions created originally by 20th Century Fox to begin each film were replaced by a now-aged Galen (McDowall) examining the events of the telefilms.

The beginnings and endings revealed Virdon and Burke's final fates: "They found their computer in another city and disappeared into space as suddenly as they'd arrived".

According to "TV Zone Special #17" (1995 issue) McDowall filmed these "two years after the demise of the first run episodes of the Planet of the Apes television series", which would be December 1976.